What’s on your mind?

Generally speaking, I’m pro-social media. I think it provides a level of connectivity we’ve never had access to before. People can actively pursue passions and maintain social connections while being continents away from each other. This is especially valuable if you are socially isolated (such as being home-bound by a disability, or being in a people sparse area such as the country). That being said, social media does have it’s problems.

The flaw I see with social media is that it provides connectivity, but it’s also very easy to avoid vulnerability. On Facebook, you can present only the best sides of yourself, you can carefully edit, adjust, and preen every message and status update you share, and the very public nature of Facebook makes it only worse. Nobody wants to stand in front of a large group of people and share their insecurities.

This all leads to Facebook, being a very powerful resource for connectivity, but a weak resource for meaningful relationships. Deep, lasting relationships come from vulnerability. When somebody sees you at your most insecure moment and jumps up to support you, that’s when real friendship happens. Facebook, unfortunately makes it too easy to hide, so we lose chances for real connection.